Well, she glides around the globe and she'll flimflam every nation She's a double-dealing diva with a taste for thievery Her itinerary's loaded up with moving violations Tell me, where in the world is... Carmen Sandiego?
Edutainment Game series created by now-defunct Broderbund Software in 1985. The series became phenomenally successful in the 1990s, spawning no fewer than three television shows, two on PBS and one on Fox, then falling into obscurity shortly around the Turn of the Millennium before resurrecting around The New Tens, starting on FaceBook. The series is now owned by the Learning Company, which hasn't made a new Carmen Sandiego game since 2001, though it did license the character for Secret of the Stolen Drums, released in 2004 for home consoles.note There was a DS game released in 2009, see No Export for You in the Trivia tab. There probably have been plenty of games released, and Carmen just stole them all.The standard case involves an educational quest to find The Loot, The Warrant and The Crook.TV shows in the franchise include:
Acceptable Breaks from Reality: In Great Chase Through Time, the manual points out that you couldn't really have spoken to any of the people (except maybe a few in English-speaking areas). You also really couldn't have been able to approach any of the royalty figures and have a chat with them. And Yuri Gagarin probably wouldn't have been too eager to help a couple of Americans who decide to help him launch into space — you and Ivan would have been arrested in a heartbeat in addition to Carmen.
It is possible that the same device used to talk to people of all different languages all over the world in "Where in the World..." is also in use during "Great Chase...", but as for the other issues, yeah, acceptable breaks...
Acme Products: Possibly parodied, as the name is given to a detective agency rather than a product.
Some versions combine this trope with the in game suffix "-Net." At default it's "Acme Crime-Net," but it could also be "Time-Net" and in the game show it was often used as Acme (fill in the blank) Net.
Affably Evil: And how! She steals all kinds of items, and it's implied that she's doing this primarily for the thrill of it, but she's given a fairly endearing personality.
Affectionate Parody: College Humor's Where the Fuck is Carmen Sandiego?, how the game show would look like with a whopping dollop of grimdark.
All There in the Manual: In a rather strange variation, some of the background information for the Acme detectives introduced in Treasures of Knowledge appears in the manual for Secret of the Stolen Drums.
For that matter, a lot of information in "Great chase through time" is in the manual. Justified as you are supposed to read the Chronopedia.
You wouldn't know one of the villains even had a Punny Name unless you read the manual, as he's only called The Baron in-game. Turns out his name is actually Baron Grinnit. Which explains why he's always smiling.
Alphabet Soup Cans: Newer games are generally worse offenders here than the earlier ones.
Justifiable in the sense that you are trying to find a culprit, so are gathering evidence to suggest where they went. Some clues make sense, such as they describe where the suspect is going, but other times it seems rather contrived, such as naming the country where something was invented or finding the birthplace of a celebrity.
Great Chase Through Time also has a few justifiable examples; such as where one must use the accounting systems employed by the Incans, put movable type on the right way (Mind you this was backwards) or properly balance a brick of salt with gold to make a fair trade. A few were rather contrived though - in 1776 for example, you give Thomas Jefferson some paper so he can draft the Declaration of Independence before taking it to Continental Congress. Somehow in the trip, he completely forgets which order he wrote what clauses on.
Word Detective and Math Detective, which teach language arts and mathematics respectively, play it completely straight.
Alternate Continuity: Fox's Where on Earth... series appears to have its own continuity. The two PBS shows may be set in the same universe, but that's not too clear since they have No Fourth Wall and are game shows. And don't even try to figure out which of the computer games take place in the same universe...
It could be said Treasures of Knowledge, Secret of the Stolen Drums, and the DS game do form one continuity as they share a few common characters and Carmen's backstory, but the games can be played without Continuity Lockout being an issue.
Awesome McCoolname: Chase Devineaux from the Word Detective, Math Detective, and ThinkQuick Challenge games. Shadow Hawkins from Treasures of Knowledge is actually a subversion, the manual for Secret of the Stolen Drums reveals Shadow's real name is Shannon.
Broken Bridge: Carmen Sandiego's Great Chase Through Time and Treasures of Knowledge
Canon Immigrant: Where on Earth established Carmen's Back Story as a former Acme detective, adopted by later games in the franchise.
Cardboard Prison: Extremely blatant: Carmen gets captured at the end of every computer game and maybe 30% to 50% of the time on the PBS game shows. Despite this, she's at large in the next game/episode. This also applies to many of the lesser villains.
Collection Sidequest: Finding all 450 amulets in Secret of the Stolen Drums. Not necessary for 100% Completion, but on the Sliding Scale of Collectible Tracking, it varies from "Could Be Anywhere" to Lost Forever, especially since once you moved to the next location there was no way to travel back to a previous location. Just to make things worse, the PS2 version has one amulet Dummied Out for no apparent reason.
Copy Protection: Horrible, horrible copy protection. Arguably some of the most frustrating of all time. You can play all you want, but to get promoted and even have a chance to capture Carmen, you have to enter certain words from certain pages of the included travel guides every few cases. Sound easy enough? Then remember that these games were incredibly common in schools...where the manuals would often get lost. And even the teachers couldn't exactly summon new copies of a travel guide (now often several years, if not a decade) out of date at will...
Where in Time... came with a hefty paperback desk encyclopedia in the box.
Ironically enough, the later CD games had no protection at all.
At least with World, the reference was an Almanac; most of the information in one of those can now be found on Wikipedia. Europe used an atlas and asked questions about what color country X on page Y was. USA what the last word on page Y of the Fodor's travel guide was. Have fun guessing!
Creator Provincialism: A notable aversion in Great Chase Through Time, in which the entire Space Race is represented by a mission where you help launch Yuri Gagarin's rocket into space. In fact, it's the only mission set in the twentieth century.
Difficulty Levels: In Word Detective, Math Detective and the awful ThinkQuick Challenge games
Disc One Final Case: Johan Gutenburg's Printing Press case in "Great chase through time". You appeared to have caught every case...yet you're still in the 15th century, and there's another disc. Not to mention, Dee Cryption is still out-Oh wait.
Ditzy Genius: Hawkins from Treasures of Knowledge is certainly very smart, having graduated from the Acme academy at the top of his class. Compared to Jules, though, he's woefully inexperienced.
Evil Gloating: Oh, how Carmen loves this. In any game where you receive messages from the Chief on a Video Phone, expect Carmen to occasionally break into your communications for gloating purposes.
Expy: Most likely an unintentional example, but Ivan Idea from the v3.0 games/Great Chase, Ben from the junior novels, Shadow Hawkins from Treasures of Knowledge, and Adam Shadow from the DS game share similar traits with Zack from the cartoon (blonde-haired male detectives who happen to be tech-savvy). However, Adam borders on being not just an expy but also a Suspiciously Similar Substitute - not only does his default outfit◊ looks near identical to Zack's outfit◊, considering the DS game is set in the same continuity as Treasures of Knowledge, Shadow is nowhere to be seen.
The ACME Detective Agency sort of started off as a fictionalized version of Interpol. In fact, in the original versions of World and USA, the organization you worked for actually was Interpol.
Failed a Spot Check: In Great Chase Through Time, you have to arrest criminals in rather...obvious places. (See Idiot Ball) At least some spots make a bit of sense. (Such as how one time, Buggs Zapper is hiding underneath a table that has a cloth over it, or where Jane Reaction is hiding inside a bag attached to a llama.)
Falling Chandelier of Doom: Carmen employs this against Jules and Hawkins in the opening of Treasures of Knowledge.
Feelies: The oldest games in the series from the 1980s and very early '90s.
Fetch Quest: Carmen Sandiego's Great Chase Through Time, Word Detective, Math Detective and Treasures of Knowledge
555: The phone numbers in the deluxe versions of World and USA are all prefixed with 555.
Genre Shift: Secret of the Stolen Drums is a platformer, which is a far cry from previous games in the series.
A more minor example is Where in Time/Great Chase Through Time. The original Where in Time from the 1980s played very much like Where in the World, only with picking the correct time period in addition to the location; Great Chase Through Time plays more like an adventure-lite game in the vein of Monkey Island.
Going Through the Motions: In Where in Time/Great Chase Through Time, at least. Characters will use a single animation for the duration of their speech, which is ridiculous if they have more than a couple of sentences.
The Great Politics Mess-Up: The older games were made before the fall of Communism, making them pretty inaccurate now. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Deluxe managed to be made in the narrow window after Germany had been reunited, but before the Soviet Union fell. Lampshaded in Treasures of Knowledge when Hawkins says he's "back in the U.S.S.R.", prompting Jules to correct him. Ironically, Treasures of Knowledgeinaccurately portrays the Russian Federation with Soviet-era borders on the in-game map. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan would like a word with the Learning Company.
There are also some non-Communism-related examples of Geography Marching On. It'd almost be impossible to count how many Carmen games show the World Trade Center towers in New York, but it's a lot (they're even in the opening credits of the Where on Earth cartoon). In the 1996 version of World, your location for Afghanistan is one of the Bamiyan Buddha statues, both of which were dynamited by the Taliban in 2001. When the name of a currency is given as a clue, it will be inaccurate for any country which has since adopted the Euro. And so on. A geography game just can't stay accurate forever, you know.
Guide Dang It: There are a few examples where they give a rather obscure hint that's not explained in-game because you're supposed to look in the guide book. The facebook game justifies this because they know you're going to use Google.
Only in one case of "Great chase through time". You have to find a carmen note in Japan by talking to one of the guards who saw the thief run by and drop a piece of litter on the ground. There is nothing indicating that it's the guard of the winter room. But to be fair, for one, the manual actually outright tells you this and two, an adventure-gamer would assume that they can brute-force their way through until they find a guard who has seen the thief walk past.
He Who Must Not Be Seen: The Chief of Acme Detective Agency is a mysterious, shadowy character in the early games.
Unless the Chief is Lynne Thigpen.
Or a posh British gentleman.
Or the Hologram Chief from "Earth" cartoon.
Highly Visible Thief: That red trenchcoat witch matching fedora won't help you sneak past ACME, Carmen.
History Marches On: When Where in Time/Great Chase was released, the manual states Mona the model in the Leonardo da Vinci mission was a fictional character and the inspiration for the painting, let alone whether or not Leonardo actually used a model for the creation of the Mona Lisa, was (at the time) unknown. In 2005, it was discovered that the Mona Lisa depicts Lisa del Giocondo, meaning the game was actually right to depict her as a real person. Of course, the depiction of her as a surly model posing for Leonardo is still completely fanciful, especially considering he spent years working on it.
Horny Vikings: Where in Time/Great Chase lampshades this. If you click on a helmet in one part of the Viking level, your guide will mention this trope, and a nearby Viking will scoff at the idea of horned helmets.
How We Got Here: Secret of the Stolen Drums starts out with Cole explaining why he failed to obey the Chief's orders to return to headquarters. Repeatedly.
Idiot Ball: In Great Chase through Time especially. You often have to check locations that are out of place or hinted by Carmen to arrest the criminals. Several times it's actually kinda blatant, or where the criminal was hiding in plain sight. (Wouldn't Isabella have found something odd about a chart in her room? Shouldn't the person holding the camel Bugg Zapper was behind have noticed it was a cardboard cutout? Why in the heck did Beethoven not see a friggin SOUSAPHONE in the orchestra?!? And how come Thomas Edison didn't see Dee Cryption hiding right behind a box in plain view of him? And Julius Caesar must have never looked behind the Ionic Pillar that had a crook behind it).
The Beethoven one deserves plenty of mention...for one, the crook was technically hiding in plain sight, Jacquelin Hyde had a sousaphone in an orchestra. Shouldn't Renee Santz have spotted something was up immediately? (Beethoven pointed out that it sounded odd.)
All of the early games had Idiot Ball in the form of the battery-powered translator. With no spare batteries. Or, say, a charger.
Impossible Thief: She stole the galaxy! And probably nobody has any clue as how she did it because she stole that too...
Improbable Age: Both ACME and V.I.L.E. seem to regularly employ teenagers. Zack and Ivy of the Earth cartoon are fourteen and eighteen respectively. Patty Larceny, Sarah Nade, and Jacqueline Hyde are teenagers, though their exact ages are never specified. According to the user's manual included with the 1997 version of Where in Time, Ivan Idea is a "teenage whiz kid" and Polly Tix is "still too young to vote".
In-Universe Game Clock: In Where in the World v3.0, depending on the in-game clock (and time zone), if you stay long enough in a location you can watch the sky go from day to night and vice versa.
Its A Small World After All: The clues you are given are about the entire country the crook went to rather than any specific place. Fortunately, knowing just the country is always enough to get you to another destination with more clues.
Handwaved in one of the rereleases of Where in the World... where you have to find the torch from the Statue of Liberty, even though you investigate San Francisco. The Chief mentions that it 'appeared seconds after the theft' in San Francisco. Oookay then...
Subverted in the Facebook game, the clues point to a specific city within a given country as some countries have multiple locations. The developersconfirmed the game was created with the mindset that people would use Google for the clues.
Landmarking The Hidden Base: At the end of the 1996 version of Where in the USA?, you not only capture Carmen, but also discover the location of her secret base. It turns out to be under the U.S. Capitol Building. Perhaps she chose the location due to the convenient supply of crooks nearby.
Limited Animation: Treasures of Knowledge is a big, big offender. They made, like, five animations of Jules and Hawkins to reuse over and over again for the entire game. And they only sort-of try for lip sync.
Luck-Based Mission: In games made pre-1996, not every witness interviewed will yield characteristic traits of the suspect (hair color, vehicle, favorite food, etc.). It's possible to not have enough information to narrow down a suspect and issue a warrant at the time of the arrest even if you interviewed everyone during a case. This is especially problematic in early cases when there are fewer locations to travel and fewer witnesses to interview.
Manipulative Editing: In-universe example - In 1871, you have to obtain a spool of thread from a factory, but it is closed. What you have to do is record the factory's owner with a phonograph, then play it back to the guard in the darkness.
"Hello, this is Joe // What? They want to borrow THREAD! Listen here, do not // give those rascals a spool of thread! // Tell them to come back in the morning, when we're open!"
"Hello, this is Joe. // give those rascals a spool of thread."
Monumental Theft: She used to be the Trope Namer, because when she isn't committing them, she's sending out her henchmen to do so.
Medium Blending: In some of the games, Lynne Thigpen of the PBS game shows plays the Chief in live-action footage. But everyone else is a cartoon character. Try to figure that one out. Also, in some of the older games, the characters are cartoons running around in still photographs.
No Name Given: The chief of Acme Detective Agency is unnamed beyond the title of Chief.
One series of Carmen Sandiego junior novels named the Chief Velma. She was made an aunt of one of the Kid Detectives and seems to have been loosely based on Lynne Thigpen's portrayal on the game show.
The Chief in the DS game was named Margaret O'Hara.
Pet the Dog: One episode of the Fox series establishes Carmen has a deep fondness for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, her favorite book as a kid. Of course, in that episode she's after the Smithsonian's pair of Dorothy's slippers...
Not to mention, the Fox series apparently states that Carmen doesn't want to hurt the ACME Detectives.
Pretty in Mink: Early boxart covers had Carmen wearing a dark-colored fur coat, with Where in the USA and Where in Europe being the most prominent examples. Carmen had a red fur coat on the original cover of Where in Time as well.
Product Placement: Back in 1998 there was an Amtrak-skinned version of Where in the USA, titled Where in America...The Great Amtrak Train Adventure. It basically added in Amtrak-themed clues and Amtrak-dressed cartoon employees as additional witnesses. It also included a promo advert for Amtrak in the in-game database.
Punny Name: Absolutely ubiquitous in the Brøderbund games; the Learning Company apparently didn't like them as much.
Just for fun, have a gander at the following baddie names from the Choose Your Own Adventure book Where In Space Is Carmen Sandiego?: Bea Miupscotti, Avery Littlebit Phelps, Morton U. Bargandfore, Kit Incaboodle, Astro Fizzix, and Hanover Fist.
For the Facebook game, it's initially subverted as most of the crooks have mundane names. It's played straight once you start solving the Hard cases that Punny Name criminals start showing.
Race Lift: Carmen is usually unambiguously Hispanic, but at times she has been changed to a paler skin tone. Arguably she just gets turned into a Mukokuseki type lighter skinned Hispanic though.
Recycled In Space: Where In Space Is Carmen Sandiego, naturally. Thankfully the game is a positive example of this trope because it was one of the best in the series.
Red Baron: Carmen's been referred many times as the Queen of Crime, and less often as the Duchess of Thievery.
Regional Riff: Used, often quite beautifully, in Treasures of Knowledge whenever Hawkins and Argent arrive in a new country.
Respawning Enemies: The elemental spirits in Secret of the Stolen Drums. Averted with Carmen's robots - any robots Cole has destroyed will remain destroyed, even if you saved, quit, and reload the game again.
Retcon: Lots of 'em. Most notably, Carmen's original Back Story had her being a former spy for the Intelligence Service of Monaco — don't expect that to show up in any game made after Czechoslovakia split up.
Right-Hand Cat: In Junior Detective and the 1996 versions of World and U.S.A., Carmen has a pet cat named Carmine. Sadly, we never see Carmen stroke Carmine in the usual villainous fashion (although Carmine being a ginger cat and Carmen always wearing red would create a terrible color clash).
Shout Out: The Facebook game has a few, mostly to previous TV shows.
The Chief looks very much like Lynne Thigpen from the game shows, specifically Where in the World.
Carmen's wanted poster references lyrics from the theme song to the World game show.
While Carmen has yet to make an actual appearance, her characterization and described appearance from the various papers on the bulletin board and databases share similarities with how Carmen was portrayed on Where on Earth. Even the logo for the Facebook game looks similar to the logo from Where on Earth. Word Of God has not confirmed this, though.
Spell My Name with an S: Treasures of Knowledge spells Carmen's middle name as Isabela. The manual for Secret of the Stolen Drums spells it as Isabella.
Stock Footage: In the 1996 version of Where in the World, the in-game database includes some video clips, all composed of footage from old National Geographic specials.
In Word Detective and Math Detective, you teleport between various V.I.L.E. hideouts around the world (and one, from Math Detective, in outer space) to find the games needed to unlock the Plot Coupons.
Surrounded by Idiots: V.I.L.E. seems to be stocked with complete idiots; given a Hand Wave in one of the game manuals, which said that Carmen has a soft spot for people less capable than herself.
Suspiciously Similar Substitute: While every Carmen TV show and game has its own cast of characters, many fulfill similar niches.
Scientists: Dr. Belljar, Sarah Bellum, Jane Reaction
Musicians: Sarah Nade, Mel Ancholy, Carri Daway, Esther Odious
Take Your Time: Sorry for the pun, but in Great Chase Through Time, quite literally.
Time Police: Whole point of Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? and Where in America's Past as well.
Time Travel: Where in Time and America's Past, obviously, and there were time machines in Where On Earth.
Tomboyish Name: Subverted with Jules. One clue Carmen left behind addressed Jules as Julia in Treasures of Knowledge. This actually caused a Dub Name Change in the DS game.explanation The developer of the DS game, Strass Productions, is French. Jules is the male French form of "Julius", as in Jules Verne.
Unwinnable by Design: If you spend too much time going to the wrong places, before you figure out some of the more obscure hints (Especially in the later cases where there is almost no room for errors), you'll run out of time or battery power.
Unwinnable by Mistake: In Great Chase Through Time, it's possible to trigger a glitch that'll make the mission unwinnable. Before you can arrest the thief, you have to assemble a "Carmen Note" which tells you where the thief is hiding. In the Aztec Empire level, you have to assemble a headdress for Montezuma, and when you complete it and add it to your inventory, a Carmen note appears. However, if you give the headdress to Ann Tikwitee when taken from your inventory, another one will spawn on the wall, meaning you have to take it again to get the Carmen note. You give it to Montezuma...but you still give it to your inventory and you're not allowed to leave the room, making the game unwinnable.
. It was playable on FaceBook
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